Orange Juice
by Spring Zephyr
Summary: Kariya and Beta make "orange juice" in Ragnarok Stadium's community kitchen.


** This is a side project of sorts for the Captain's Cookbook fanzine on Discord. The organizer of the fanzine also does fanfic commissions at inazumafocus on Twitter.**

**Prompt: "****i have this idea where the two characters that hate each other, and are forced together on a cooking project but then as they cook together they found out that the person isnt that bad?" ****by Solphix. Not quite faithful to the prompt, haha… but this was the idea I got. ^^;**

Even people from two hundred years in the future drank orange juice at breakfast, it seemed. Ragnorok Stadium's community kitchen had at least one carton at all times.

Somewhat more surprisingly was that they still had instant macaroni and cheese too. People still ate this in the future? Well, whatever. Comfort food was comfort food, Kariya guessed. He'd always had this image of people from the future eating everything from a pouch, powdered and dehydrated food like what you saw astronauts eating on television. Or the MREs army people ate. Freezer dried spaghetti and things like that.

But boxed macaroni was sort of similar, and more importantly, it served his purpose. It didn't take long for Kariya to see the orange juice, the box containing a little packet of orange powder, and form an idea.

He swished the juice still inside the carton before pouring it in a cup for himself, glad that there wasn't much left. No point in wasting perfectly good orange juice, even if El Dorado had a mysterious, endless supply.

Kariya was mixing the macaroni powder with water inside the carton when he heard the door open behind him. He froze, thinking about how much trouble he would be in if this were Shindou. There was no way Shindou would give him a chance to explain, not with all the stress he was under right now.

Or worse –

"What do you think you're doing?" Beta asked.

– _Anyone_ from El Dorado.

"Uh… making macaroni?"

Beta didn't blink. She didn't smile, frown, or yell at him either. It was a pointless effort, but Kariya shifted slightly, trying to obscure the carton with his body anyway.

"Right," Beta replied. "I guess you wouldn't know this, being from so far in the past and all, but did you know that plastic melts on a stovetop?" Her eyes grew darker. "_Do you think I'm some kind of idiot?_"

There it was. The deep, scary voice that meant she was probably thinking of killing him.

"The atmosphere is so tense right now!"

"Hm?"

"I can't take it anymore," Kariya admitted. "I have to do something to try and lighten the mood, you know?"

Between assembling the strongest eleven in history, fighting off El Dorado and now the Second Stage Children, and the weight of Ragnorok's outcome weighing on his shoulders, there hadn't been much time for playing pranks. If Kariya was being honest, he didn't feel the need to play tricks as often either. Ranmaru would call that "being mature", but right now, it was the only thing he could think of to take everyone's minds off of the tournament.

The one that would literally decide the fate of the world. It was no wonder that Shindou was practically pulling his hair out, especially when he was captaining the most unorganized team on the roster.

Beta sighed, walking toward the fridge. "Okay. But if you're going to play a trick," she said, grabbing a bottle of hot sauce, "you have to do it like this."

"Wha-? I'm trying to trick people, not kill them!"

"Don't be such a baby," Beta pouted.

She twisted the top off the hot sauce bottle. Kariya's fake orange juice, which had been turning such a lovely orange color, took on a slightly less natural reddish hue. Frowning, Beta examined her handiwork before deciding it needed a little more water.

"That looks gross," Kariya frowned even deeper, leaning in for a closer look. "And nobody's going to fall for that."

Despite what he'd just said, Beta was quickly reaching a ratio of water, powder, and hot sauce that almost resembled real juice. He wondered what it tasted like – if there was still a hot sauce flavor or if it was back to being cheese, like he'd originally planned.

"Gamma will," Beta replied nonchalantly.

"You don't say..."

"I'll make sure Gamma drinks it first."

"You can't poison Gamma, even if you hate him." Kariya protested.

"Why not?"

"We need him on our team!"

"Eh?" Beta turned her head to look at him. This time, her eyebrows were furrowed, and she spoke in a cutesy, ditzy voice that Kariya was pretty sure was fake. "Are you saying I'm not good enough?"

"It's not really that, but – "

Kariya faltered, wondering how Shindou was so good at this. Or even Ranmaru. Anyone would've been better at mitigating this conversation than he was.

Beta surprised him with a giggle. "Don't worry. You wouldn't know this, but Gamma and I have an ongoing prank war, of sorts."

"Really?" Kariya asked.

Although not everyone who played for El Dorado was all business, most of the ones Kariya had talked to were. It was hard to imagine two of ithe group's members joking around and tricking each other, like normal people. Least of all Beta and Gamma, whom he was pretty sure would rather risk letting the SSC win Ragnorok before they worked together.

"Don't go thinking this means we have anything in common though," Beta replied, sticking her nose in the air. "But you're also not as annoying as Gamma. I _might_ even consider passing to you in the next practice match."

"Uh. Thanks?"

"Don't get your hopes up," Beta finished.

She put the tops back on the hot sauce and orange juice, wiped the countertop of any stray powder, and then put the carton and the sauce back in the fridge. The unused noodles went in a plastic bag and back in the cupboard Kariya had found them in.

They didn't speak. Beta seemed to have no interesting talking to him anymore, and Kariya was too busy trying to figure out exactly what kind of person Beta really was. When she left, it was as abruptly and

Kariya would have helped clean, except Beta was so methodical and abrupt about it that he wouldn't have known where to jump in. It wasn't like there had been much to clean anyway.

For both of their sakes, Kariya hoped everything Beta had said about Gamma was correct.

** I've never written Kariya before. That was interesting.**


End file.
